aubreyturner.org

This guy obviously wasn’t thinking very far ahead.

A motorist’s bail was revoked when police said he had the daring to show up drunk to his preliminary hearing on drunken driving charges.

Emerson Moore Jr., 46, of Caernarvon Township, was awaiting his hearing before Muhlenberg Township District Justice Dean R. Patton when Moore got into an argument with state police Trooper Roberto Soto, officials said.

Soto, who had arrested Moore in the drunken-driving case June 20, smelled alcohol on Moore’s breath as the two stood in the hallway outside Patton’s courtroom, officials said.

Moore, who had driven himself to court, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 percent, police said. The legal limit for driving in Pennsylvania is 0.08 percent.

Patton revoked Moore’s bail and sent him to Berks County Prison on $2,500 bail. He also will be cited for public drunkenness, he said.

“You don’t show up drunk for a preliminary hearing, especially when it’s a drunk-driving case,” Patton said. “I asked him what he was thinking and he said, ‘You told me I could drink at home.’”

Sounds like he was suffering from a major case of dumbass.

The citizens of Keller spoke loudly this past Saturday, telling the Keller ISD that the ride on the gravy train is over.  All three bond proposals (worth a total of $152.3 million) were soundly defeated. 

The failure of all three bond proposals in a record turnout surprised even the package’s most vocal critics. Many had expected a close or failing vote on the third proposal, which would have authorized spending $23.1 million to add onto or refurbish existing schools and install athletic turf at Fossil Ridge and Central high schools.

A $129.2 million proposal to build six schools also failed, as did a measure that would have allowed the district to issue bonds without decreasing the portion of the tax rate used to operate schools.

Trustee David Farmer said the results were a clear message that residents feel overtaxed.

“If they were only against proposition three, only proposition three would have failed. They all three failed,” Farmer said. “That’s a much greater statement. It takes a lot for people to vote against things that would have been good for their kids.”

Frankly, I’m tired of hearing how the influx of new students means we have to pony up more money each year.  If schools were funded fairly (that is if we have to fund schools, which I would dispute, but I don’t want to get off on a tangent here), the people using the service would be paying for it.  If our taxes go up every time someone moves into the district, it would seem that the schools aren’t being funded in a fair way.  Someone, somewhere, is getting a free ride.  Yes, I’m a heartless bastard, but if someone can’t afford the costs their children generate they shouldn’t have had them.

Anyhow, I think the thing that pissed me off the most about this bond proposal is summed up in point four from this article by Dave Lieber.

4. Don’t let academic dreams get hijacked by the sports crowd. Never again make the mistake of mixing athletic needs and academic needs in bond questions. Don’t let your pro-bond community spokesmen be the same people who persuaded the board to give backdoor approval to install artificial turf for the district’s stadium this summer—even though bond voters previously rejected this.

Academics first! Some Realtors brag to prospective home buyers that the district is “exemplary,” when it is rated as “recognized.” As school board President Richard Walker candidly admits: “I want the Keller school district to be what the real estate agents are advertising.”

At a time when we’re hearing horror stories about teachers having to buy their own copy paper because the schools don’t have any, the school district spent over $400,000 on artificial turf.  Then, they have the nerve to shove even more money for artificial turf in this bond proposal (bond item #3), along with a bunch of vague (and seemingly high) costs for new schools.  The whole thing had the feel of a free-money scam about it.  That inspired me to make sure I got out to vote against the bond proposal.  If I’m going to be taxed at such a high rate, I’m going to demand that they at least have the decency to spend the money on academics.

This article in today’s paper really grabbed my attention.

At first, Arlington police thought Michelle Hughes was just an uncooperative witness, or maybe a victim as a passenger in the truck that ran a red light and caused a double-fatality accident last week.

She lay in a hospital bed, saying she couldn’t remember the wreck, while officers searched for a man who bystanders said fled the scene.

But after being confronted with forensic evidence, the 32-year-old Arlington woman has acknowledged being the driver of the Chevy 3500 dually pickup that killed Emilia Terry, 43, and her son, Bryan Terry, 21, on Thursday, police said.

Hughes was in custody Monday at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth on suspicion of two counts of intoxication manslaughter with bail set at $100,000, police said. The Terrys were returning from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, a relative said.

I’m not trying in any way to make light of what happened, but the irony in being killed by a drunk driver on the way back from an AA meeting is stunning.  Damn!  You couldn’t make up something like this.  People wouldn’t believe it.

It was also nice to come back to the whole Rathergate thing.  The only way I knew anything was going on was when I read Glenn Reynolds.  It’s kind of interesting to see this thing unfold in reverse chronological order.

I went to the range last night at Bass Pro.  Next to Bass Pro is Big Buck’s restaurant.  They have TVs in the restroom (at least in the men’s room, I can’t say whether there are any in the lady’s room).  I couldn’t help but notice Dan Rather looking a bit unhappy on last night’s news as I walked by. 

I look forward to much future discomfort for Rather, although I doubt that he’ll ever come out and admit his bias.  We might, if we’re lucky, get a ‘we were duped’ confession at some point.  Of course, if he does admit error, I’ll only find out about it through weblogs.  I can’t stand to watch the national news anymore.  It raises my blood pressure and scares the dog (she thinks I’m yelling at her).

I’ve been on vacation this week, not only from work but from everything else.  It was enjoyable to get away and not pay attention to much of anything, although I didn’t go anywhere.  I built a new computer to replace my current main server, and I’m almost done getting all the files and programs set up on the new one.

It’s amazing how much time you can waste fiddling with little stuff.  As an example, I use a Python script called StormSiren that monitors for National Weather Service alerts and sends a message to my phone via email.  When I was setting it up on the new system I noticed that it failed the sending test, since my ISP now requires authentication before sending emails through their SMTP server (this also means that the version on the current server isn’t working and I hadn’t noticed).  StormSiren uses a Python mail library to interface with the SMTP server, but while the library had a login method, StormSiren didn’t have any code to call it.  I’d never done Python programming before, but in an hour and a half I added new code to add configuration questions to the “wizard”, store the ID/password in the config file, and to call the login method before calling sendmail.  I also uploaded the diffs to the SourceForge discussion forum.  I suppose I could have opened a bug report, but it didn’t seem so much like a bug as just a new feature. 

Anyhow, I was so eager to get away from everything that I forgot to put up the “Back In A Few Days” sign on this weblog. 

Here’s just one more reason to be wary of extremely loud music.

Blasting music can be hard on the ears and the neighbors, and now researchers say it can also pack enough punch to collapse a lung.

Reporting in the medical journal Thorax, they describe the cases of four young men who suffered a lung collapse—technically called pneumothorax—that appeared to be triggered by loud music. Three of the men were at a concert or club when the pneumothorax occurred, while the fourth was in his car, which was outfitted with a 1,000-watt bass box because he “liked to listen to loud music.”

I can recall several times where I could feel extremely loud bass in my chest.  It actually made me feel a little short of breath.  I’ve also noticed something similar at the range when someone beside me is shooting one of those monster hand cannons.  The article mentions that the problem seems to affect tall, thin male smokers most.  I guess this is one of the few times that being a short, fat guy has its advantages.

Be careful.  That call may not be from the actual caller shown on your Caller ID.

This week, a company is launching technology that will make it possible for someone to choose what appears on phones that have Caller ID, the feature for displaying identifying information about an incoming call.

It could be a different phone number, or even a few words, said Jason Jepson, founder of Star38, which has developed the commercial Caller ID spoofing service.

From what I’ve read elsewhere, this is just a simple trick with a digital switch.  But that means that it isn’t always effective (if you’ve had Caller ID for very long, you’ve probably noticed that it’s not terribly reliable). 

Anyhow, the founder of Star38 claims that the service will be limited “to licensed private investigators and collection agencies.”  That last part sounds like it might just violate some kind of federal law regarding the actions collection agencies are allowed to take.  I know it would violate the laws concerning telemarketing.

I suppose this is just one more reason to never trust someone who calls you seeking information.  If it appears to be some kind of official agency (police, FBI, etc), it would be best to get the person’s name and office information and call back (using the agency’s publically available main number).  Of course, I should point out that it’s probably best never to talk to them without a lawyer anyhow.

I originally mentioned this case in July.  Now it appears that a resolution has been reached.

EULESS – The flap is over in the Heritage Place neighborhood. American flags can now fly free.

Homeowners voted Monday to revise a deed restriction and allow flags to be flown as long as they are not larger than 5 feet by 8 feet, and not faded or damaged.

Of course, not everyone is happy.  It seems that a few people are miffed that their petty tyranny was exposed for all to see.

Tensions remained high Monday night. Many homeowners expressed frustration about the media attention, and at least two people walked out of the meeting at the Midway Recreation Center.

“This is creating nothing but animosity between all of our neighbors,” said one resident who declined to identify herself.

They may also be unhappy that their actions have spawned potential state legislation to bar any homeowners assocation from preventing the American flag from being flown. 

This post at Across the Atlantic pointed out how the cleaning crew accidentally threw away a piece of “artwork.”

A bag of rubbish that was part of a Tate Britain work of art has been accidentally thrown away by a cleaner.

The bag filled with discarded paper and cardboard was part of a work by Gustav Metzger, said to demonstrate the “finite existence” of art.

It was thrown away by a cleaner at the London gallery, which subsequently retrieved the damaged bag.

Hmmm…  Seems to me that if you can’t tell it’s art, then perhaps it really isn’t art, then is it?  Anyhow, this reminded me of some Blog Ads for Quent Cordair Fine Art that have been running recently on Instapundit. 

In particular, the work of Han Wu Shen really caught my eye.  For example, consider his piece titled “Lying Woman”:

To me, this is actual art.  Here you can see the work of someone who has taken the time to apply considerable skill in creating this painting.  Throwing together a partially shredded nylon wall hanging and a bag of garbage is not art.  Soaking something in feces or urine is not art.  Frankly, I’m starting to wonder if most of modern art is contrived as a snow job to try to scam the public into continuing to support a bunch of talentless hacks.

Call me old fashioned if you will, but I think art should attempt to represent something, real or imagined.  I suspect that Han Wu Shen and the rest of the artists with Quent Cordair’s gallery have probably forgotten more about art than Gustav Metzger ever knew.

As I was finishing with breakfast this morning I happened to see a small white dog in my back yard.  The neighbors in back of me have two dogs—the little white one and a large, young, rambunctious chocolate lab.  The first time I saw the little white dog in my yard, he’d found a loose board in the fence and managed to push it far enough out to squeeze under it.  He couldn’t get back, since the board had to be pulled out and while dogs are good at pushing, they don’t seem to have grasped the concept of pulling something.  I pulled the board out and he squeezed back through and I nailed the board down.  I thought that the problem was solved.

Then a couple of weeks ago the little white dog was back.  This time the big dog had been banging on the fence with enough force to cause the nails at the bottom of the board to come out.  Once he got it into that state, a couple more hits caused the board to break in the middle, allowing the little white dog through (who knows, perhaps he was sending in the white one as advanced recon for future operations).  I pushed the little dog back through, put the board back in place and put some bricks in front of that spot in hopes of discouraging further incursions.

This morning, though, when I went out to send the white dog on its way I discovered that two boards were now broken, the bricks were scattered, and the big lab was in my yard now.  I tried to coax him to go back through, but he seemed more interested in jumping and slobbering on me than going back into his own yard.  I even tried putting the little white dog back through the hole in hopes that he would follow.  No dice.

At this point, I thought I should get the dogs’ owner involved, so I walked around the corner to his house.  I rang the bell and waited a bit (it was around 8:15) and the guy finally came to the door, dressed only in shorts and with disheveled hair.  It’s obvious that I’d woken him up.  I explained that his dogs had broken through the fence and were in my yard and asked him if he would call them back while I blocked the hole.  When I came around my house to go into the yard I noticed that half a board was missing at the bottom of my gate and the gate itself was knocked halfway out at the bottom.  There was also evidence of digging.  I surmised that the small dog had dug out under the gate and the big lab had followed, knocking the gate all to hell in his haste to follow the white dog.  I noticed the neighbor looking through the hole in the back fence at this point and told him that it looked like they escaped by going under my gate.  I went out to the street and down a ways, but I couldn’t locate them.  As I was coming back he showed up in his Explorer and asked me how long they’d been out.  I guessed it had been less than 10 minutes, since they were still there when I left.  He then took off to look for them.

I still don’t know if he found them.  I haven’t heard them back there all day.  I noticed that neither of them were wearing collars, hence no tags either.  If they haven’t been found by animal control, they could be miles away by now.

It’s hard to tell for sure from the surveyor’s drawings, but I think the fence in back is on his side of the property line and hence his responsibility.  Regardless of that, though, since his dogs did the damage, he should be responsible for fixing that section of the fence.  But for now, I’ve temporarily nailed a piece of fencing over the hole.  It looks like crap, but it should keep the dogs from getting through there again.  Of course, that big, rambunctious lab could probably make a hole anywhere he wanted to with enough persistence.  It’s not like he’s using his head for much else…